Voter's Guide For Serious Catholics

Catholics must learn how to vote not just as citizens, but as Catholics too. They need to judge each candidate individually based on where he stands on key moral issues. They need to exclude from their consideration any candidate who is wrong on any of these issues.

And that's where the Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics comes in.

The voter's guide helps you cast your vote in an informed manner consistent with Catholic moral teaching. It helps you eliminate from consideration candidates who endorse policies that cannot be reconciled with moral norms that used to be held by all Christians.

On most issues that come before voters or legislators, a Catholic can take one side or the other and not act contrary to his faith. Most matters do not have a "Catholic position."

As you can read for yourself, this booklet gives clear and concise official Church statements on five issues that do have moral implications:

* Abortion

* Euthanasia

* Embryonic stem-cell research

* Human cloning

* and Homosexual "marriage"

These issues are "non-negotiable" when it comes to their moral standing and Catholics must not compromise on these issues.

The following text is from the IRS ruling stating that this Voter's Guide does not itself constitute the political campaign intervention prohibited to 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations such as churches:

[Catholic Answers, Inc.] created, published and distributed the "Voters Guide for Serious Catholics" ("VGSC").The VGSC asserts that it is intended to help the reader vote for candidates for public office in a manner consistent with Catholic moral teachings.The VGSC identifies five issues it deems to be "nonnegotiable" issues and instructs the reader on how to narrow down the list of candidates to those who are acceptable based on the non-negotiable issues.The VGSC does not directly or indirectly make reference to any specific candidate, political party or election.Therefore, the content of the VGSC, standing alone, is not political campaign intervention because the VGSC does not support or oppose any specific candidate for public office. --Internal Revenue Service, Addendum to Letter 3609P, May 2, 2008